Topic Summary

Posted by: Anonymous

Below is a transcript of a letter I sent to Asus after the problems I experienced with this model: in short, the screen, battery, and hard drive of my zenbook failed just shortly over a year. Unwilling to pay the $400 to repair a 1 year old computer, I asked about replacing the hard drive myself for the $100 it should properly cost. Asus replied that they could not provide me recovery materials for windows 8. To date, I have received no apology nor follow-up from Asus. For a premium computer that I treated carefully and kept in pristine condition, this feels equivalent to being scammed. This is the worst product and customer service I have seen in technology, and would strongly recommend against this product.

“Dear Sir or Madam,

About 2 years ago I purchased an ASUS laptop, model UX31A. About 8 months in, it started having power and BIOS issues and faulty spot appeared in the screen. I sent it in for an RMA with a message, part of which included the following complaint:

"2. The computer has a tendency under high CPU loads to crash. It will often crash into the BIOS, which cannot be exited without pressing the power button to shut off the computer."

This issue appeared again 4 months after repair, right during my finals at college, losing a paper and several study guides, and finally crashed once into the BIOS, without repair. I soon found out the hard drive had irreparably failed.

I sent the machine in for repairs, and was told that it would cost $400 to replace the hard drive, an outrageous cost for a college student.

Today I called ADATA and was told that the specific hard drive you put in the machine, XM11-V3 is known to fail, and that several customers have complained of this issue.

Within a year, the screen, power supply and hard drive all failed on this product. Furthermore, since my purchase, hundreds of complaints listed on the internet have accumulated for this specific hard drive failure.

I am appalled that there was not a recall issued for this model, and that you continued to sell this computer to unsuspecting customers.

As a college student on a short budget, I cannot recommend this laptop, your products, or your repairs services to anyone else.

I plan to publish this story online, as I believe it represents incompetence in product design, sales, and customer service.Yours sincerely,*********”

Posted by: Darth Vader

You CAN upgrade the SSD, but ASUS uses a proprietary mSATA interface. Go look up Macbook Air vs. Asus Zenbook SSD mSATA interface; I saw an image that compared the two SSDs and they are physically different both in size and pin layout. So yes, it is removable and upgradeable, but you will have to pay a premium for the proprietary SSDs.

Posted by: Allen.Ngo

Can the SSD be upgraded from 128GB to 256GB SSD during service maintenance? I really would not be satisfied with the memory that it is coming with at the 1K range. Is there a possibility of upgrade in future if one wishes? I hope SSD is not soldered to the board as you see in case of the RAM....

RAM is not end-user upgradeable. The SSD is removable and can be upgraded as shown in the images.

Posted by: Mohit

Can the SSD be upgraded from 128GB to 256GB SSD during service maintenance? I really would not be satisfied with the memory that it is coming with at the 1K range. Is there a possibility of upgrade in future if one wishes? I hope SSD is not soldered to the board as you see in case of the RAM....

Posted by: MThomsen

According to asus in Denmark the sandisk is the prefered ssd for the ux31a !!!! Personally I think this is creazy since the SSD is so important for the user experience. But there you are, apparently the sandisk is what you can expect if you order a ux31a, at least in Denmark.

Posted by: house

I own a UX31, the old Sandy Bridge CPU version with ordinary screen. 4G Ram is enough with super fast SSD disk. You had to use maximum power to run Photoshop or even office 2010 smoothly. I use lightroom to process raw images from my DSLR. The CPU can auto boost to 2.4G, but it can only lasts 10 to 20 minutes. Enough for me to process a dozen of photos or more.